135. TIM MINCHIN: Be hard on your opinions

Tim Minchin is an Australian (my first Aussie, how embarrassing) musician, comedian, actor, composer and writer. Since making a name for himself at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and winning the best newcomer award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2005, Tim has done all sorts of awesome things – sell-out comedy tours, sell-out orchestral arena tours, writing and composing the music for the award-winning musical Matilda, playing Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar and narrating an Academy Award-winning animated film, just to name a few.

Most recently, Tim gave a excellent Occasional Address at the University of Western Australia, where this quote is taken from. In the hilarious speech, Tim gives his nine life lessons which I guarantee you will enjoy and get something out of. You can watch the full speech and read the transcript here.

You can also check out some of Tim’s songs on his YouTube channel or watch this sweet animated short film, Storm (Warning: contains naughty language), based on one of his poems about pseudoscience.

Nice! I just saw Tim’s speech on youtube a few weeks ago and loved it. I have to say he has succesfully shamed me into doing more cardio 🙂
I’m glad Gavin did this comic. It goes to show that a quote doesn’t need to be from a “famously wise” person to be quotable and/or exhibit wisdom.

Is still is “treat others as you would want to be treated”. In your example, if someone wants to be beaten with a wet towel, and you respect their desire, you are treating them with respect for their desires, as one would like to be treated, no?

I know some people who get angry when their information is questioned. I can only wonder why…

Even more so, I believe, this applies to the fitness industry and the gym culture.

As a new personal trainer, it’s exceptionally important to understand that people come from all walks of life. With differing activity levels and variations in almost all aspects of life.

So when an aesthetically overweight individual is walking on the treadmill, it hurts me to hear other gym goers that say “Look at that fatty on the treadmill.”

We don’t know their life story. We don’t know why they’re here. We don’t know what is going to happen. This is the things we need to change. These are the things we need to open our mind too. And this expands into other areas of course.

This is just my two cents.

Amazing comic as always. And it was drastically different with that brain sucky machine. If only it was real 🙂

Nice comic, but the fact the quote is from Tim Minchin to me makes it carry no weight. Despite how funny he is, he’s not a Teddy Roosevelt or Carl Sagan. He’s barely known in his own country, let alone the top of his field. Basically, he is not someone I would ever take life advice from. I became a fan of this site because it took quotes and speeches I’d often seen posted elsewhere and illustrated them beautifully. Sorry if I sound harsh, but I’m sure I’m not the only person underwhelmed by this post.

It’s pretty ironic to witness such an unaware demonstration of the herd effect in a post about free opinion. It’s not prejudice, it’s criticism, and it’s a legitimate form of expression.
The only valid argument here was the argument to authority a couple of comments below.

How many sell out arena gigs would you consider not well known and an avid massive following #feeters.
His charity work, record number of award for Matilda, his intelligent articulate discussion, his sell out arena comedy gigs and JCS, Californication??? I can go on but that aside this speech along with others is thought provoking, intelligent, funny and will be studied for its use of language and context in schools in years to come. But that would be my opinion like yours an arse hole that should be examined

I think that maybe you should reread the comic and apply it to yourself… And as for barely known in his own country, I am certain that you could ask almost any Australian who he is and they would know, even my 80 year old grandparents know of him.

Seriously! “Be hard on your opinions” If award winning performances of his own and a top selling, award winning Broadway show aren’t markers of a man at the top of his field I don’t know. To quote Tim again “Genius comes in many forms, and this postulating…prick..aint one of em”

Ah well said. As you said, only the famous, and those at the top of their field are worth listening to. You are not one of them. Your opinions are not worth listening to. Don’t like that? Then don’t do it to other people.

It’s not a brain nor heart, it’s supposed to be an imaginary organ that represent opinion, sucked out by the imaginary machine called opinion extractor, in the imaginary health facility called opinion specialist. Imagination, dude.

Thanks Gav, for making me aware of yet another awesome thing Tim has done. Storm has long been one of the most favourite bits of word art I have ever heard, and this is phenomenal. Your visual art (as always) complements it beautifullly.

I really liked your art, especially the idea of opinion extractor and the syringes for empathy etc.
Like Gaiman says, “Make good art.” and you do that everytime! 🙂 🙂
I have always enjoyed reading your comics !! 🙂 🙂 And as always, looking forward to many more. 🙂 🙂

This quote could be seen as remarkably apropos to the internet. This format of communication invites people to sit behind a computer and seal themselves in a bubble. Maybe this is why so much of the internet comes across as people shouting at one another with no comprehension that those others are real people.

People tend to use the internet’s wealth of information merely to reinforce their own opinions, not challenge them. No matter what you think, be it sound or unsound, you can type it into Google and find a hundred thousand people who agree with you. You can find a forum or bulletin board devoted to your exact biases where every poster will agree with you.

It is sad that people tend to only reinforce their own beliefs instead of challenging them. I think it comes from fear – fear that they may discover that all this time they have been wrong.

It is so much easier to cloak yourself in reinforcing messages and surround yourself with like minded individuals than to have to consider, defend, and challenge your own memes through careful analysis.

Of course the full quote about opinions goes back to Frank Zappa if I’m not wrong: “Opinions are like assholes—everybody’s got one, and they all stink.” I don’t think you’d have to look deep into the Zappa archives, particularly in his court case material, to find some worthy material to work with in the future.

My friend says carry bars of food for those who need – those that accept you can help immediately, and those that reject are looking for a quick buck. An alternative is to give “five for yourself, one to someone else.” This mentality allows for positive growth of even not all there people. Sharing a lunch can be daunting and draining – but it creates the ground for mutual growth from two entirely different perspectives. The more we care for each other, the more we and our society heals itself.

These are all really good ideas 🙂 I’m a teenager and my only source of income is money I’m given for lunch though…but I suppose it’s far easier to act like you care when you have the money to spare and it’s not a big sacrifice? I don’t know, I generally try to help people through ways that don’t need money (anonymous letters to cheer them up etc.) but I may have to skip lunch for a day a week and give it a go! Thanks for the the idea. After all, I’ll get a big tea when I get home 🙂

That’s a good idea, Rosie! It’s more important it comes from you than it costs a lot of money. “The poor gave to the poorer, the poorer to the poorer yet.” – Uris
It is definitely easier to give when you have a lot of money. But if you don’t start now (I gave out a bag of bread with a friend to homeless from restaurant leftovers) maybe you won’t start?

To be clear – I think that you should use all your lunch money and do the letters to start out with. It’s not good to starve yourself in your growing years with money your parents give. That said, it costs $1-3 to get a clif bar (or relatively healthy prepackaged bar of choice), and you can carry it in your backpack – it won’t go bad. You can stick it in your backpack and wait for an opportunity to arise!

Always suspected you were a complete beta/white knight bro. You always cast successful, hardworking people as women (the surgeon? Why, a brown skinned woman of course, so diverse!), your readers of the month are ALWAYS women and now the privilege thing. Completely sold out to the feminazi liberal establishment. What’s next, a TED talk?

There’s such a thing as drawing inferences from insufficient data – are you going to say next that this comic claims there are no blondes in the world? Hey, there are none represented in this comic, right? Realistically speaking, there are too many kinds of people on earth to represent them all, even across all of Gavin’s comics… 🙂

You know, I never noticed any of that in the comic till I read your comment – I had to go back up and check to come up with the blonde example above. Maybe you ought to just take the message of the comic and not read too much into it. Funny, but looks to me like only the ones hung up on race and sex and religion and so on notice such stuff. I really wonder when people will look at each other as simply just people and nothing else.

Then again, that’s just my opinion. Either your opinion or mine or most probably both might need to go through that machine in the comic… 😛

Good except giving money to homeless is the worst thing you can do for them. There are scientific studies about this out there. I understand what you are trying to explain but this is probably the wrong example.

I also would’ve wanted to see in the end of the comic the suit man to just sit beside the beardy man and start telling and listening about stories of their lives. And maybe only after that give him something, if he really trusts the money will be well spent. Or as a gift for the great life stories of the beardy man.

I have fallen in love with your comics. What a wonderful way to bring inspiring words and beautiful visuals together. Has there been a book published? I for one would LOVE to be able to buy a book of your work. I am a college student studying secondary art education and I would love to have a book of these on my desk to inspire myself and my students. If there is a book available, direct me to it! I want to buy it! If there isn’t one yet, please consider it. I would love to have one 🙂 Fantastic work.

What the fuck has empathy to do with intellectual rigour? Why not add also ‘tolerance’, ‘peace’ and ‘holism’. I have a serious point here! In the Western philosophical tradition, arguments have been judged by many measure sticks, but empathy is not one of those. It’s a concept of a different domain, that of ethics.